Green Room

Glenn Beck’s Show: Leftism Destroys African American Communities

Yesterday on Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News, Fox Business Network analyst Charles Payne talked about the culture of victimization and hopelessness prevalent in African American communities today and the role leftism played in shaping it.

Payne commented on the tragic death of Chicago honor student Derrion Albert who was beaten to death in Chicago earlier this week. Derrion was a remarkable kid: he may have grown up in a poor household and neighborhood but he was determined to do well at school, worked hard, and took care of his grandmother after she was diagnosed with cancer. His most precious possession was his computer, which his family was able to buy him after saving for it for two years.

According to Payne, Derrion’s death wasn’t an accident but a sign of what’s wrong with African American culture today.

“When I was a kid,” he said explaining he grew up as an army brat, living a wonderful life until he was an army brat no more and the family moved to a ‘black neighborhood’ after his mother and father divorced, “we got beaten up every day for speaking like white people, sounding white, wearing the wrong clothes.”

“There’s just so much much pent up anger and animosity that these kids [i.e. like Darrion Albert] have to hide their intelligence” or face brutal beatings.

He recalled he always wanted to be a business man, which his mother knew, of course. So he studied hard, did his best, and tried to make something of himself. His mother wanted to encourage Payne so she bought him a plastic briefcase when he was 12 or 13 years old. He was delighted; he knew his mother didn’t have money, but she saved so she could buy this – admittedly cheap for our standards – briefcase for her son.

So he took it with him to school and… his classmates destroyed it. Why? Because Payne “acted white.”

“I believe a lot of this goes back to when black Americans accepted this liberal premiss that we’re not accountable for anything; that because we’re descendants from slaves, that you know, ‘it’s OK, it’s not your fault, you’re a victim’ – and they’ve created this sort of pool… you know it’s not just a physical ghetto I’m talking about but a mental, sort of barrier.

“Where, you see, OK Michael Vick is a victim of the justice system, not a person who committed a crime. That mentality is pervasive. You see it over and over, and it’s fed to us and it’s fed to us, and it’s fed to us – and we accept it. We take it.

“And at the end of the day what we’re getting for it: we wait for our welfare checks. We wait for it – people wait for it like ‘I wait for my check,’ like it’s something I worked for. And it has taken away everything; everything that God gave us innately – you know, when you put two people on an island they’re going to have certain things innately; they’re going to have the desire to survive, to thrive, to do better – all that is suppressed in our community. And what’s left is this sort of squalor.”

Watch it:

This is exactly what I was talking about in my original post about Darrion Albert’s death. Nobody is supposed to address it, but leftism has truly destroyed African American culture – in some ways, it may even have done more damage than slavery and segregation.

Thank you so much, Mr. Payne, for having the courage to say these things. I have thought for years that “the Great Society” and subsequent welfare programs have done more to damage the inner city / poor community than any other thing in our history.

It is vile, immoral and inherently corrupt to keep a portion of our society from acheiving their God given potential (believing in permanent welfare is believing that people are incapable of any better), all for the purpose of maintaining a voter base.

Liberalism seeks and destroys individual acheivement. It must be stopped.

As an Army brat (and later vet and military spouse), I connected with what Charles Payne said about his early childhood. The military is a great environment that truly doesn’t see race. Everything is about the “mission”. That is where we are failing as a society. Instead of focusing on ethnic groups, race, religion, class, etc. we need to be focusing on a mission. The other guest Glenn had on talked about this mission—re-establishing marriage as the foundation for raising children.

Yep. As long as black Americans vote 90+% for Democrats, they will remain on the Democrat plantation. Education is the primary way out of poverty in America– or anyplace on Earth. When a culture stigmitizes its best, great hope for advancement, the results are woefully predictable. Wash, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, recent immigrants with far fewer resources than native-born Americans (including people of many colors) work hard, get an education, and quickly move up the socio-economic ladder. Are we cowards about race in this country? Indeed. Few people, other than Charles Payne, have the guts to speak these truths.

The military is a great environment that truly doesn’t see race. Everything is about the “mission”.

Agreed. Interestingly, that is generally the case in media-maligned Christianity as well. Go to a liberal church (e.g., UU or Northeaster Episcopalian) and you see the same old group of affluent white folk giving themselves blisters from all their back-patting. Head on over to some sort of “evangelical” church and you see a whole socio-economic-racial spectrum.

When “diversity” is the GOAL, there is no motivation to achieve it. When the goal is some sort of MISSION, diversity (among other goods) is simply a natural fall-out.

Meanwhile, recent immigrants with far fewer resources than native-born Americans (including people of many colors) work hard, get an education, and quickly move up the socio-economic ladder. Are we cowards about race in this country? Indeed. Few people, other than Charles Payne, have the guts to speak these truths.

That is indeed a major problem, in my opinion. Race and ‘culture’ have been hijacked by Democrats – and they’re silencing all critical voices.

I watched and learned from that program, but I did not learn exactly what Van der Galien said above. I got the sense that the anger felt by black youth was (while supported heartily by some leftish ideologies)more the result of manipulation coming from some of their own. While fingers were pointed at the debilitating effects of welfare policies on this population, it was also tacitly pointed out that this ‘victimization’ was passed on from generation to generation much like the old IRA tactics of indocrinating each generation with a large dose of hate which allowed them to justify what ever they did. I got the feeling that they blamed their own community in large part for allowing this mind set to perpetuate. I also thought they were saying that change needed to come from within. I thought it was a very insightful and interesting program and needed to be explored further.

That picture of Charles Payne is outstanding. What I see is a man capable of looking into the camera, with a real smile and who does not look shifty…. good for him for speaking about his own experience…. we need more of this.